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Boekverslag George Orwell
Nineteen eighty-four / 1984
Geschreven door: | Lisanne (4 vwo) [meer] |
Datum ingestuurd: | 26 mei 2007 |
Taal: |  |
Woorden: | 1.350 |
Bekeken: | 1648 keer (3 deze maand) |
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(1984)NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
by George Orwell
1. The title of the book is “Nineteen Eighty-Four
It has 226 pages and three chapters.
2. 1984 is the year in which the story starts. The book was actually going to be called 1980, but because it took Orwell such a long time to write it, he pushed the date to 1984.
3. George Orwell (1903-1950) was a well noted essayist and novelist, who is best known for his novels “1984”and “Animal farm”, which are both very critical of totalitarianism.
The well-known phrase “Big Brother is watching you” as well as the BBC series “Room 101” derive from “1984”.
4. This book was written for adults, in my opinion. The images portrayed in the book are very bleak, and it’s all annihilating pessimism leaves me quite at a loss for words. Nonetheless it is a beautiful book, and even though it’ll take a while, I will surely read it again.
5. Despair, maybe. Or futility. Maybe through that, to fright you into fighting to secure a different future.
6. It’s a dystopian, political novel.
7. Winston Smith: The main character. He’s very aware of himself, his surroundings and the consequences of his actions. A thoughtcriminal, which ultimately means he will be vaporized, he wants to undermine the authorities as much as possible without being caught.
Julia: Winston’s lover. She’s a bit naïve but rebellious. She’s very active in pro-party activities, therefore is a position where she can steal things like Inner-party food.
O’Brien: He works in the same division as Winston does, who immediately feels a strong connection with him, even though he’s not sure he’s trustworthy.
8. In the year 1984, A passage on page nine of the book reads: ‘To mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote: April 4th, 1984 ’. I think that when the story ends, about two years have passed.
9. There are a couple of flashbacks, for instance when he reminisces about meeting O’Brien, or about his first act of thoughtcrime.
10. In Airstrip One, Oceania. Airstrip One is what was once London, Oceania consists of America, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and a part of Africa, and is one of three super states, the other two being Eurasia and Eastasia.
11. Yes. I think the reign of such power could really happen. There have been plenty of totalitarian regimes in the past and the control of minds seem possible too. It’s a very detailed image of a still relevant view.
12. 6079 Smith, W. One of the many citizens of Airstrip One, but different all the same. Even though his every move is closely scrutinized by telescreens, he secretly hates Big Brother and everything else connected with the current government, he doesn’t “doublethink”. This happens to be a crime that is not only punished by death, but every single evidence that you have ever existed will also be erased. Winston knows so because he does it for a living, although these people are referred to as ‘unpersons’ and other changes as misprints.
Julia also works at the Ministry of Truth. At first Winston despises her and even dreams of killing her, but one day she manages to slip Winston a note stating “I love you”. Because relationship between party members are strictly forbidden, not to mention having sex without the purpose of procreation, their affair has to be an utter secret and they only meet very occasionally and in places they render to be safe. Such as a small room above a curiosa shop in the “prole” side of the city, which they were able to let from the seemingly trustworthy old man that runs the store. One day O’Brien comes up to him.
Winston has always felt like there was something special about O’Brien so when he asks Winston if he would be interested in having a look at the latest version of the newspeak dictionary, and gives him his address so he can stop by, Winston sees through that excuse. A couple of weeks later he and Julia meet on O’Brien’s doorstep and find out Winston was right and O’Brien was part of a secret anti-Big Brother organization called “the brotherhood”. Because O’Brien is an Inner Party member, he is able to switch off his telescreen, which makes it safe to tell them all about the brotherhood.
On one of the days that Julia and Winston use their little room they’re having a conversation about how when you’re arrested, they can make you confess everything, but they could never make them betray each other. When Winston comments “We are the dead”, someone repeats that message. They immediately know they’ve been caught. A painting above their bed falls down, revealing a telescreen.
When they’re arrested and are brought downstairs Winston sees the shop’s owner that had let them use the room, but now his hair was black and he looked much younger. It has obviously been a trap all along.
Winston is brought to the Ministry of Love, where he there torture him until he confesses everything they want them to, even things he was never guilty of. Then one day he wakes up and sees O’Brien. He was in on it too. The thoughtpolice had been investigating Winston for months already and they knew his inner most deepest thoughts. Nothing had ever been safe.
Winston had once said to Julia “Freedom is the freedom to believe 2+2=4”, and now they were going to make him believe otherwise using electric shocks to show that their truth is the truth. They were going to make him doublethink.
All of this wasn’t enough though. Winston was brought to the dreaded room 101, where he was faced with his biggest fear: Rats. They were going to put his face into a mask with a cage attached to it, in which two starving rats lived. He could already feel the mask on his face when he suddenly knew how he could stop it. In despair he screamed out: Do it to her! Don’t do it to me, do it to Julia!”
Winston and Julia had been wrong… They did make them betray each other.
13. I like the simplicity of the book’s title but because it’s so unrevealing, you might not be attracted to it if you haven’t heard of the book before. What compelled me to read this book is that I saw people refer to it all over the internet, so I got curious about it. Then when I was browsing for vinyl records on a market, I came across a single by the Eurythmics entitled “sexcrime (nineteen eighty-four)”. After hearing the song I read the book.
I don’t remember what my expectations were when I read it for the first time, but the story is –in my opinion- exactly how it should be.
The atmosphere is very tense throughout the book, because Winston expects to be arrested, but there is not a moment in the book where you least expect that to happen then when it does.
At some of the moments whilst reading I found myself with the strangest facial expressions, because the story draws you in even though you really can’t relate to any of the situations in the book. Especially near the end of the book, when suddenly the story progresses very quickly, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the book. It is a very strange ending though, and a bit unsatisfying because though Winston gets his “happy ending” as he gets shot, a couple of pages before that you still hope he might not have changed.
The language used in the book was not that that difficult, except for the words in Newspeak.
Newspeak is a language described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year." It highly simplifies vocabulary and grammar, with the ultimate cause of making thoughtcrime impossible, because there would be no words to commit it with.
At the end of the book Orwell has even attached an appendix called “The Principles of Newspeak” explaining the concept of the language.
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